NEXus m u m
The ininotaiir waits iii his labvi'intli. He
waits patieiilly íor someone to come and
rescue him from the intricate maze of
galleries, oi llie liundreds of corridors
lliat oiily the cadavers of the sacrificial
victims help to distinguish. What will
mv savioiir be like, I wonders? Will it be
a Ijnll OÍ' a man? Or perhaps a bull with
a nian's face? Or a creature like me?
Donu'nguez was not the fierce and robust
bul) of tile bullfight, but another, much
more meiancliolv, like the niinotaur of
the labvrinth.
Childlike. an indefatigable creator,
an avid devourcr of lile, with a face
"doiible that oí aiiv normal person", as
César González Ruano vvrote of him,
Osear Domínguez liad suffered, until
now, the neglect of his work.
Il ¡s surprising to note that tliis
man. hoiii in La Orotava. son of a
landowner who. like ihe first Aureliano
Buendía of One ¡liiiitlred icnr.s of
So/itude, always brought home the
inveiitions that had cauglit his eye
during his travels in Europe, should
llave suffered the neglect not im]5osed
solelv bv his time, but also bv later
times. A neglect that was overeóme
thanks to the i'irst anthological
exhibition of his work, following long
years when it liad been scattered, and in
some cases, lost.
It was iii his home in La Orotava
wliere Domínguez first saw his father's
butterfly collections, Mt. Teide which he
discovered later, and from faraway
Paris, the landscape that he could only
begin to paint from memor\- and
distance.
It was his fatlier who seiit him to
Pai-is. first in 1927. to look afler the
family fruit export business, a biisiness
for which Osear Domínguez had no
calling. Domínguez spent the income
from the fruit on monumental partías,
but his father never chided him for this.
At that time he was an arrogaut. if
ratliei' ingenuous. yoiuh, as can be seen
in his first sclf-])ortrait, signed Oscaí'
and with a pi])e between Ihs lips. This
image was confirmed in 1928, when he
returned to Tenerife to do his military
service, and was photographed on a
rooftop, slashing giant eggs with his
sabré. The |)ose was fidl of humour,
cióse to the surrealisui ihal would be so
iuipoi'tanl in his lile.
His first attempts at painting,
inspired by Cubism, were not well-received
by Canary Island critics.
Ernesto Pestaña, writing in La Rosa de
lo,i I ieiilo.s. poinlcd out the lack of
direclion of his slyle. He was still too
young.
His father's death in 1931 obliged
him to return lo Tenerife, where he
faced a precarious financial siluatioii,
Beiween 1932 and 1933 he inounted
two surrealist shows in Tenerife. The
fist, in the Círculo de Bellas Artes in
Santa Cruz, was praised by Domingo
Lójíez Torres, who wrote for Gaceta de
Arte, and was regarded as a theoricien
radical et rigoureux.
At the second show, held during a
trip to Tenerife with Roma, whom he
portrayed in a mutilated state, with
bloody hands playing a piano, his
connection to surrealism was obvious.
Along with the disturbing portrait of his
friend he showed others works with
surrealist readings.
But Domínguez did not confine
himself to surrealist painting. He was a
surrealist at heart, as Eduardo
Westerdahl noted in the catalogue of the
second show: "Osear Domínguez in his
prívate lile, is, from head to toe, and in
every stej) he takes, an authentic
surrealist. "' Osear Domínguez felt he had
the support of Cácela del Arte. His work
with the group extended into editorial
tasks, and he niade the cover —a
decalcoinania— for the edition devoted
to Willi Baumeister. He had invented
this technique, which fil perfectly in the
"automatism" preached bv Bretón in the
first Surrealist Manifestó.
However, it was not until 1936,
when his decalcomanías would become
known through their reproduction in the
magazinc Minotaiire., coinciding with the
execution of some of his best paintings:
Máquina de coser eleclrose.viial
("Electrosexual Sewing Machine"),
Mariposas perdidas en la montaña
("Butterflies Lost on the Mountain"),
Recuerdos de mi isla ("Meinories of iny
Island ), which he showed in Tenerife.
Alongside these paintings he displaved
siu'i'ealist objects. The catalogue has a
•yvv
CfNieOMlANllCODf " l í MODfÜNO
prologue by Eduardo Westerdahl, wlio
wrote of this artist iii the last issue of
Caceta de Arte:
"His latest works distance
theuiselves froiii the acadeniy that
threatens Dalí, and join in the advenlure
of a more direet approach to the
subconscious world and the revelations
of his persona.
In June of the same year, his
decalcomam'as were presented by André
Bretón in issue no. 8 of Minotaiire. the
same issue in whicli "Le Chateau Etoilé"
reflected the poetas impression of the
islands.
This official debut was ratlier late
in coming. since as early as 1935
Domínguez liad sliown his works in the
café of Place Blaiiclie, if we are to
believe the testiniony of Marcel Jean,
who preciselv defined the process in the
following inanner: "Liquid gouache
crushed between two sheets of smooth
paper". The publication of a series of
these works, with a prologue bv André
Bretón entitled "Grisou", was a project
that had to be aborted for economic
reasons. The gas emanating from the
burning of coal, which Domínguez chose
for his tilles, reflected a pleasure in
indefinite elements.
Domínguez had been the
instrument of Breton's trip to Tenerife,
at the invitation of Eduardo Westerdahl
and the staff of Gaceta de Arte, to
attend the opening of the / Exposición
Surrealista Internacional, the high water
mark of the liberal, surrealist-minded
avant-garde, prior to the darkness of the
Spanish Civil War. At the outbreak of
war. Domínguez returned to Paris,
where he remained until his death. hi a
Paris that was free, then occupied, and
then free again. There, at first, his
inks to the surrealist group were beyond
all doubt. His participation in the
activities of Breton's group was
connected to his own, tirelessly original
paintiug.
Domínguez originated more than
decalcomania. At the Exposition
Internationale du Surréalisme organised
in 1938 by André Bretón, he showed,
among other works, the subsequently
destroyed "Jamáis", an object úi which a
woman's legs disappear inside a
graniophone, just as in "La máquina de
coser electrosexual" they disappear
inside a carnivorous plant.
Given the position of the "Canan,-
Island Dragón Tree", as he was cailed in
the Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme,
and given his career. especially riow that
his work can be judged as a whole. one
might well ask why it was that he has
been so neglected. What dark shadow on
his destiiiv kept this man, acknowledged
bv Bretón himself as the most surrealist
of the surrealists, from winning more
general recognition. Something kept him
in the shade, among the networks of a
group whose other members gained such
fame and notoriety.
The story of the fight in which
Víctor Brauner lost an eve, for exatnple,
could be analyzed bv Pierre Mabille in
L'oeil de la peinture, to confirm. once
and for all, the surrealists' theory of
premonition. It allowed Víctor Brauner,
who had made a number of self-portraits
showing an empty eye-socket,
to show that his aims were higher than
the ordinary levéis of perception, and
even that the tragic mishap had freed
him to paint better. But Osear
Domínguez would be remembered
forever as the quarrelsome artist who
threw a wine bottle at Esteban Francés,
and missed. Domínguez was jealous of
Francés' success, both as an artist, and
with a woman, Irine Hamoir.
Thenceforth he had the dubious lionour
of being remembered as the accidentally
guiltv party in the bloody episode.
But the incident did not change his
good relations with Bretón, who
described how he dreamed of
Domínguez painting an aurora borealis
formed by lionesses practising
cunniliugus, and who wrote in 1939. in
"Des tendences les plus recentes de la
peinture surréaliste", aníl with
regard to Domínguez s cosmic
period:
"With a movement of the arm
that is as quick and uncontrolled as that
of a window washer or a bricklayer who
after the house is finished sisns the
glass con wliite lead, he puts his brush
at the service of severa! colours and
manages on his canvases to define new
spaces, transporting us to those
scenarios that are puré fascination and
that we hadn't visited since. as children,
we saw colour pictures of meteors in
books.'
This gloomy fate nuist have
become real while in Marseilles the
painter waited, in vain, for a visa that
would allow him to escape to the United
States. In the south of France, meeting
with André Bretón and other surrealists.
he drew that card representing Freud,
the magician of the black star, for a
Tarot deck. Domínguez puUed it off with
humour: the card, showing Freud's
moustache with a woman as a necktie,
and the dream symbols arranged as a
sort of phylaclery, attain all the
schematicism and occult symbolism they
need. Domínguez was familiar with
Freudian theories, and particularly the
interpretation of dreams, as were most
of the surrealists.
Humour, so dear to the surrealists
that Louis Aragón dedicated his
"Treatise on Style" to it, intelligent
huuiour that concealed the underlving
desperation, interested Osear Domínguez
as much as it did his aesthetic
coUeagues. In 1940 the Canarv' Island
])u¡iil('i' ilhislralefl Aiidré Bretón s
Antliu/ogie fie l'/miiioiir iioir.
After his l'ailed anciiipt to leave
Vicliy. Frailee, Domínguez returned to
Paris. Space in his paintings then
appears, as Emmanuel Guigon points
oiit "astonisliingly strnctured", as if tlie
jjainler were beginning lo beeome
obsessed with the net from wliielí he
could not escape. A geometrically
strui;tnred space now held sway in his
jjainting —the geometry of nets, of the
laljvrintli.
He also contrilsuted to the
niagazine La Main ti Pliiine. where. as in
sonic othcr iinderground inilílications,
wonld hí' halched the possibiiity oí
clianging surrealist aiitomatisin inlo tlie
pliysical gesturahsm that ])0st-war
artists wonJd trv. While workiiig with
tliis ptibiication, Donn'nguez was
strugghng to develop new svstems for
making colleetive painlings. hi this
search he discovered iithoclironie
surfaces, wliere he defined the
solidifícation oí time. What could be
betler tlian to luid thus "...the point
wliere life and death, the real and the
imaginarv, the past and the future ... are
no longer seen as contradictory", as
Bretón liad foreseen. Years before, in
1937, Domínguez had naiiied one of his
paintings "Le souvenir de Tavenir"
("Remeinbering the FtUure').
His expositioii ol the theory of
lithochronic surfaces was written in
collaboration with tlie then physicist
Ernesto Sáhato, and publislied in 1943
in La Main a Pliinie. He later broke with
the magazine when it published an open
letter calling Paul Eluard •'an oíd
scoundrel". But at the end of the war his
heart was divided. His friendship with
Eluard and Picasso, whom he admired,
was ineoinjiatible witli his conlinued
membership in the surrealist group.
Osear DomíiiKiiez was excludéd"
from the subsequent SuiTealist shows
Bretón organised after the war. Ahhough
Domínguez was surrealist by coiiviction,
he launched a new stage in his painting.
His formal rendering then came to
resemble that of two other artists whom
Bretón has "excomnmnicated": Picasso
and De Chirico.
Domínguez brouglit his surrealist
energies to bear on new forins. hi I his
Toro inoribiuido, 1^)44.
period he mixed lieavv, tliick, douljle
brush strokes with the niagic evoked by
the Ferrara plazas painted bv De
Chirico.
It was at the end of the war when
the minotaur emerged from his
labyrinth. Acromegaly —the
deformation of his facial features— liad
begun to torment it. Fierre Guéguen
then wrote:
"'Domínguez is the king of the Isles
of Labyrinth. Aren t minotaur evelashes
used as paintbrushes?
The minotaur had to emerge again.
And thus began his richest period, when
his sexual desires were poured into
mobile sculptures, in which he could
shape the woman into the object
dreamed and formed as he wished,
distorting the figures in geometric planes,
pislols that point lo the seeiiig eye, the
bMllerflies his father collected reappear.
In 1946, his participation in the
•Praofue exhibitions entitled "The Art of
Repiiblican Spain: Artists of the Paris
Scliool'' served to confirní his poiiliral
sympathies, about which he neveí'
theorized.
His rift with the surrealist
movement widening steadilv. Also he
lurned again to decalcomia in iiiany of
his works, especially after 1947. He
wrote to Eduardo Westerdahl aboul his
friendship with Picasso, which he
reaffirmed, while stating his view that
tlie surrealist movement had died a
natural death.
It was the same year that he
published his |ioetic storv "LP.V dcnx ijui
se croisení'.
His admiralion for Picasso shines
throMgh in maiiv of his works, not onlv
in the tliick black strokes that surround
his figures, but his figures theinselves,
his women, the ondulation of tlieir
bodies, and the bull and the minotaur he
paints in their labvrinlh.
And yet he never repudiated
surrealism, even at his death, for which
he chose Si. Silvester's Dav of 19.57,
while he was expected for dinner at the
home of his friend Ninette.
The premonitorv self-portrait of
his vouth, showing bloodv wrists, the
torture of his acromegaly in the self-portrait
he called "Rhinoceros' in 1946,
and the terrifying self-portrait of 1949,
can all be condensed into the iniage of
the severed head of a bull from which
blood gushes onto a woman who is at
the same time being engulfed by a
carnivorous ]:)lant in "La máquina de
coser electrosexnar. Self-portrait of the
paintei', the alter ego of his owii
nightmares, on a bull's head, or perhaps
that of the minotaur Domínguez
painted, in 1937, near a palette, a still
innocent and undamaged heart. The
heart of the passionate, unhappy, and
perhaps indecipherable. Osear
Domínguez.

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

NEXus m u m
The ininotaiir waits iii his labvi'intli. He
waits patieiilly íor someone to come and
rescue him from the intricate maze of
galleries, oi llie liundreds of corridors
lliat oiily the cadavers of the sacrificial
victims help to distinguish. What will
mv savioiir be like, I wonders? Will it be
a Ijnll OÍ' a man? Or perhaps a bull with
a nian's face? Or a creature like me?
Donu'nguez was not the fierce and robust
bul) of tile bullfight, but another, much
more meiancliolv, like the niinotaur of
the labvrinth.
Childlike. an indefatigable creator,
an avid devourcr of lile, with a face
"doiible that oí aiiv normal person", as
César González Ruano vvrote of him,
Osear Domínguez liad suffered, until
now, the neglect of his work.
Il ¡s surprising to note that tliis
man. hoiii in La Orotava. son of a
landowner who. like ihe first Aureliano
Buendía of One ¡liiiitlred icnr.s of
So/itude, always brought home the
inveiitions that had cauglit his eye
during his travels in Europe, should
llave suffered the neglect not im]5osed
solelv bv his time, but also bv later
times. A neglect that was overeóme
thanks to the i'irst anthological
exhibition of his work, following long
years when it liad been scattered, and in
some cases, lost.
It was iii his home in La Orotava
wliere Domínguez first saw his father's
butterfly collections, Mt. Teide which he
discovered later, and from faraway
Paris, the landscape that he could only
begin to paint from memor\- and
distance.
It was his fatlier who seiit him to
Pai-is. first in 1927. to look afler the
family fruit export business, a biisiness
for which Osear Domínguez had no
calling. Domínguez spent the income
from the fruit on monumental partías,
but his father never chided him for this.
At that time he was an arrogaut. if
ratliei' ingenuous. yoiuh, as can be seen
in his first sclf-])ortrait, signed Oscaí'
and with a pi])e between Ihs lips. This
image was confirmed in 1928, when he
returned to Tenerife to do his military
service, and was photographed on a
rooftop, slashing giant eggs with his
sabré. The |)ose was fidl of humour,
cióse to the surrealisui ihal would be so
iuipoi'tanl in his lile.
His first attempts at painting,
inspired by Cubism, were not well-received
by Canary Island critics.
Ernesto Pestaña, writing in La Rosa de
lo,i I ieiilo.s. poinlcd out the lack of
direclion of his slyle. He was still too
young.
His father's death in 1931 obliged
him to return lo Tenerife, where he
faced a precarious financial siluatioii,
Beiween 1932 and 1933 he inounted
two surrealist shows in Tenerife. The
fist, in the Círculo de Bellas Artes in
Santa Cruz, was praised by Domingo
Lójíez Torres, who wrote for Gaceta de
Arte, and was regarded as a theoricien
radical et rigoureux.
At the second show, held during a
trip to Tenerife with Roma, whom he
portrayed in a mutilated state, with
bloody hands playing a piano, his
connection to surrealism was obvious.
Along with the disturbing portrait of his
friend he showed others works with
surrealist readings.
But Domínguez did not confine
himself to surrealist painting. He was a
surrealist at heart, as Eduardo
Westerdahl noted in the catalogue of the
second show: "Osear Domínguez in his
prívate lile, is, from head to toe, and in
every stej) he takes, an authentic
surrealist. "' Osear Domínguez felt he had
the support of Cácela del Arte. His work
with the group extended into editorial
tasks, and he niade the cover —a
decalcoinania— for the edition devoted
to Willi Baumeister. He had invented
this technique, which fil perfectly in the
"automatism" preached bv Bretón in the
first Surrealist Manifestó.
However, it was not until 1936,
when his decalcomanías would become
known through their reproduction in the
magazinc Minotaiire., coinciding with the
execution of some of his best paintings:
Máquina de coser eleclrose.viial
("Electrosexual Sewing Machine"),
Mariposas perdidas en la montaña
("Butterflies Lost on the Mountain"),
Recuerdos de mi isla ("Meinories of iny
Island ), which he showed in Tenerife.
Alongside these paintings he displaved
siu'i'ealist objects. The catalogue has a
•yvv
CfNieOMlANllCODf " l í MODfÜNO
prologue by Eduardo Westerdahl, wlio
wrote of this artist iii the last issue of
Caceta de Arte:
"His latest works distance
theuiselves froiii the acadeniy that
threatens Dalí, and join in the advenlure
of a more direet approach to the
subconscious world and the revelations
of his persona.
In June of the same year, his
decalcomam'as were presented by André
Bretón in issue no. 8 of Minotaiire. the
same issue in whicli "Le Chateau Etoilé"
reflected the poetas impression of the
islands.
This official debut was ratlier late
in coming. since as early as 1935
Domínguez liad sliown his works in the
café of Place Blaiiclie, if we are to
believe the testiniony of Marcel Jean,
who preciselv defined the process in the
following inanner: "Liquid gouache
crushed between two sheets of smooth
paper". The publication of a series of
these works, with a prologue bv André
Bretón entitled "Grisou", was a project
that had to be aborted for economic
reasons. The gas emanating from the
burning of coal, which Domínguez chose
for his tilles, reflected a pleasure in
indefinite elements.
Domínguez had been the
instrument of Breton's trip to Tenerife,
at the invitation of Eduardo Westerdahl
and the staff of Gaceta de Arte, to
attend the opening of the / Exposición
Surrealista Internacional, the high water
mark of the liberal, surrealist-minded
avant-garde, prior to the darkness of the
Spanish Civil War. At the outbreak of
war. Domínguez returned to Paris,
where he remained until his death. hi a
Paris that was free, then occupied, and
then free again. There, at first, his
inks to the surrealist group were beyond
all doubt. His participation in the
activities of Breton's group was
connected to his own, tirelessly original
paintiug.
Domínguez originated more than
decalcomania. At the Exposition
Internationale du Surréalisme organised
in 1938 by André Bretón, he showed,
among other works, the subsequently
destroyed "Jamáis", an object úi which a
woman's legs disappear inside a
graniophone, just as in "La máquina de
coser electrosexual" they disappear
inside a carnivorous plant.
Given the position of the "Canan,-
Island Dragón Tree", as he was cailed in
the Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme,
and given his career. especially riow that
his work can be judged as a whole. one
might well ask why it was that he has
been so neglected. What dark shadow on
his destiiiv kept this man, acknowledged
bv Bretón himself as the most surrealist
of the surrealists, from winning more
general recognition. Something kept him
in the shade, among the networks of a
group whose other members gained such
fame and notoriety.
The story of the fight in which
Víctor Brauner lost an eve, for exatnple,
could be analyzed bv Pierre Mabille in
L'oeil de la peinture, to confirm. once
and for all, the surrealists' theory of
premonition. It allowed Víctor Brauner,
who had made a number of self-portraits
showing an empty eye-socket,
to show that his aims were higher than
the ordinary levéis of perception, and
even that the tragic mishap had freed
him to paint better. But Osear
Domínguez would be remembered
forever as the quarrelsome artist who
threw a wine bottle at Esteban Francés,
and missed. Domínguez was jealous of
Francés' success, both as an artist, and
with a woman, Irine Hamoir.
Thenceforth he had the dubious lionour
of being remembered as the accidentally
guiltv party in the bloody episode.
But the incident did not change his
good relations with Bretón, who
described how he dreamed of
Domínguez painting an aurora borealis
formed by lionesses practising
cunniliugus, and who wrote in 1939. in
"Des tendences les plus recentes de la
peinture surréaliste", aníl with
regard to Domínguez s cosmic
period:
"With a movement of the arm
that is as quick and uncontrolled as that
of a window washer or a bricklayer who
after the house is finished sisns the
glass con wliite lead, he puts his brush
at the service of severa! colours and
manages on his canvases to define new
spaces, transporting us to those
scenarios that are puré fascination and
that we hadn't visited since. as children,
we saw colour pictures of meteors in
books.'
This gloomy fate nuist have
become real while in Marseilles the
painter waited, in vain, for a visa that
would allow him to escape to the United
States. In the south of France, meeting
with André Bretón and other surrealists.
he drew that card representing Freud,
the magician of the black star, for a
Tarot deck. Domínguez puUed it off with
humour: the card, showing Freud's
moustache with a woman as a necktie,
and the dream symbols arranged as a
sort of phylaclery, attain all the
schematicism and occult symbolism they
need. Domínguez was familiar with
Freudian theories, and particularly the
interpretation of dreams, as were most
of the surrealists.
Humour, so dear to the surrealists
that Louis Aragón dedicated his
"Treatise on Style" to it, intelligent
huuiour that concealed the underlving
desperation, interested Osear Domínguez
as much as it did his aesthetic
coUeagues. In 1940 the Canarv' Island
])u¡iil('i' ilhislralefl Aiidré Bretón s
Antliu/ogie fie l'/miiioiir iioir.
After his l'ailed anciiipt to leave
Vicliy. Frailee, Domínguez returned to
Paris. Space in his paintings then
appears, as Emmanuel Guigon points
oiit "astonisliingly strnctured", as if tlie
jjainler were beginning lo beeome
obsessed with the net from wliielí he
could not escape. A geometrically
strui;tnred space now held sway in his
jjainting —the geometry of nets, of the
laljvrintli.
He also contrilsuted to the
niagazine La Main ti Pliiine. where. as in
sonic othcr iinderground inilílications,
wonld hí' halched the possibiiity oí
clianging surrealist aiitomatisin inlo tlie
pliysical gesturahsm that ])0st-war
artists wonJd trv. While workiiig with
tliis ptibiication, Donn'nguez was
strugghng to develop new svstems for
making colleetive painlings. hi this
search he discovered iithoclironie
surfaces, wliere he defined the
solidifícation oí time. What could be
betler tlian to luid thus "...the point
wliere life and death, the real and the
imaginarv, the past and the future ... are
no longer seen as contradictory", as
Bretón liad foreseen. Years before, in
1937, Domínguez had naiiied one of his
paintings "Le souvenir de Tavenir"
("Remeinbering the FtUure').
His expositioii ol the theory of
lithochronic surfaces was written in
collaboration with tlie then physicist
Ernesto Sáhato, and publislied in 1943
in La Main a Pliinie. He later broke with
the magazine when it published an open
letter calling Paul Eluard •'an oíd
scoundrel". But at the end of the war his
heart was divided. His friendship with
Eluard and Picasso, whom he admired,
was ineoinjiatible witli his conlinued
membership in the surrealist group.
Osear DomíiiKiiez was excludéd"
from the subsequent SuiTealist shows
Bretón organised after the war. Ahhough
Domínguez was surrealist by coiiviction,
he launched a new stage in his painting.
His formal rendering then came to
resemble that of two other artists whom
Bretón has "excomnmnicated": Picasso
and De Chirico.
Domínguez brouglit his surrealist
energies to bear on new forins. hi I his
Toro inoribiuido, 1^)44.
period he mixed lieavv, tliick, douljle
brush strokes with the niagic evoked by
the Ferrara plazas painted bv De
Chirico.
It was at the end of the war when
the minotaur emerged from his
labyrinth. Acromegaly —the
deformation of his facial features— liad
begun to torment it. Fierre Guéguen
then wrote:
"'Domínguez is the king of the Isles
of Labyrinth. Aren t minotaur evelashes
used as paintbrushes?
The minotaur had to emerge again.
And thus began his richest period, when
his sexual desires were poured into
mobile sculptures, in which he could
shape the woman into the object
dreamed and formed as he wished,
distorting the figures in geometric planes,
pislols that point lo the seeiiig eye, the
bMllerflies his father collected reappear.
In 1946, his participation in the
•Praofue exhibitions entitled "The Art of
Repiiblican Spain: Artists of the Paris
Scliool'' served to confirní his poiiliral
sympathies, about which he neveí'
theorized.
His rift with the surrealist
movement widening steadilv. Also he
lurned again to decalcomia in iiiany of
his works, especially after 1947. He
wrote to Eduardo Westerdahl aboul his
friendship with Picasso, which he
reaffirmed, while stating his view that
tlie surrealist movement had died a
natural death.
It was the same year that he
published his |ioetic storv "LP.V dcnx ijui
se croisení'.
His admiralion for Picasso shines
throMgh in maiiv of his works, not onlv
in the tliick black strokes that surround
his figures, but his figures theinselves,
his women, the ondulation of tlieir
bodies, and the bull and the minotaur he
paints in their labvrinlh.
And yet he never repudiated
surrealism, even at his death, for which
he chose Si. Silvester's Dav of 19.57,
while he was expected for dinner at the
home of his friend Ninette.
The premonitorv self-portrait of
his vouth, showing bloodv wrists, the
torture of his acromegaly in the self-portrait
he called "Rhinoceros' in 1946,
and the terrifying self-portrait of 1949,
can all be condensed into the iniage of
the severed head of a bull from which
blood gushes onto a woman who is at
the same time being engulfed by a
carnivorous ]:)lant in "La máquina de
coser electrosexnar. Self-portrait of the
paintei', the alter ego of his owii
nightmares, on a bull's head, or perhaps
that of the minotaur Domínguez
painted, in 1937, near a palette, a still
innocent and undamaged heart. The
heart of the passionate, unhappy, and
perhaps indecipherable. Osear
Domínguez.